


tessera

by mask_and_mirror



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-09 12:12:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7801399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mask_and_mirror/pseuds/mask_and_mirror
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little bit of fluff between Spencer and Caleb and that fateful meeting in Spain during the Five Years Forward timeline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tessera

“It’s Latin for—“

“Password. I know.”

Her mouth turns down at the corners. “Why?”

“I spent a month and a half at a charter school in a required Latin class.” He has always been good at typing while he talks. “It was enough time to learn a few vocab lists,” he says, barely making a sound on her laptop keyboard as his fingers fly through a deft series of clicks and taps.

Oh. _Right._

“There you go. “ He stops typing and flips the laptop back around to face her. “Wifi reconnected”

Spencer’s hands stay curled around her coffee cup.

Caleb watches her staring at the computer screen for a moment. “I thought you couldn’t get anything done until you checked,” he says.

Spencer shrugs. She looks at the computer screen, looks away, and looks back, removing her hands from the coffee cup to hover over the keys.

“Are those caffeine shakes, or is Spencer Hastings nervous about a little test?” he asks.

“A little of both,” she says. She raises her eyes to meet his gaze. They look at each other from underneath uneven brown bangs; they have both relaxed too much in the Spanish summer and will need a trim before they head back to the States. Soon. Sooner, anyway, than Spencer remembered it three weeks ago before she found Caleb on his own tour through Barcelona.

She looks back down at the computer, opens her email, and clicks the link. She stares at the overbright screen until her focus blurs.

Caleb shifts in his seat. “Well, how did you do?”

There it is. _There_ is what she was waiting for. She had missed the soft rasp of his voice, of course she liked hearing him talk, but _there_ she found something more.

“It’s not just ‘a little test,’” she says, her mouth beginning to crook back up in a smile. “And I don’t think you know only a ‘few vocab lists’ worth of Latin.”

“I’ll tell you what else I know,” he says, “if you tell me your LSAT score.”

She holds his gaze, breaking into a broad grin. “Just about perfect.”

Caleb raises his eyebrows, leans back in his chair. He watches her with sheer satisfaction. “Of course you did,” he says, smiling, shaking his head. “Still worried you’ll fail, after all these years of succeeding.”

Spencer feels heat prickling under her skin. She finally understands where the _siesta_ tradition originates; she feels herself growing languid under the afternoon sun. But for the heat, however, she wouldn’t remember that she’s still in Barcelona. She can’t hear the mingled strands of Spanish and Catalonian floating from other tables, and she doesn’t smell the car exhaust and cigarette smoke endemic to the street cafe where she and Caleb have met every afternoon for five days in a row. All she can process in the moment is his concern for her, his happiness for her, his memories of her, and the unrelenting heat.

“Caleb, do you…” she begins. Her breath catches. “What… what other Latin do you know?”

“I _do_ only know a few vocab lists, because I spent most of the time learning fifty different ways to curse the teacher out in Ancient Greek and Aramaic, which is about forty-nine more ways than _he_ knew,” he says. “There’s a reason I was at that school a month and a half.”


End file.
